Do you think the bluegrass-oriented jam bands need to go back more?

I’m not saying anybody needs to do anything, but that’s what gets me off. It’s also out of a cultural thing. Bluegrass was not created by people who grew up watching ‘Sesame Street.’ I’ll put it to you that way. Nor was jazz. You can’t separate the music from the cultural atmosphere that it came out of. It wasn’t easy for those people. Jazz was made by black musicians who were getting beat up by cops in the ’50s. Bluegrass was created by guys that were scrunched together in Cadillacs eating bologna sandwiches and not sleeping. This music wasn’t created by college kids. There’s nothing wrong with education, but these great styles didn’t come about by book and video. Now you have a book and video on how to play bluegrass and how to play jazz. That’s not the way to learn to play bluegrass or how to play jazz. That’s good that that exists, and I probably wish I had it when I was learning, but I got to work with real bluegrass musicians. That’s the way to learn the style, to work with masters of that style.

People like the Del McCoury Band are really carrying on bluegrass. Ricky Skaggs, The Nashville Bluegrass Band, these people are rooted in bluegrass. They are contemporary, but they’re well-grounded. People like Alison Krauss,

to me, that’s not bluegrass. That’s a kind of permutated pop-grass or ‘pink-grass.’ That’s what we call Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris.

You’re playing Boston and for the first time in New York with Bela in April. Do you think you’ll do more dates with him this year?

Yeah. Every year for the past few years we’ve played some dates with Bela. It’s the only time we’ve played New York, and I think that’s sold out already without any advertising. I think they’re going to put us on the cover of ‘Downbeat’ for the April issue around that time.

Do you think you’ll tour with any of the other folks on ‘Dawg Duos?’

I’d like to, but I don’t create the gigs. I’m not a promoter. I’ve been doing a few things with the Retrograss band. And I do things with Doc Watson from time to time.

You guys are going to miss each other by two weeks. Doc is playing the Bottom Line two weeks before you with his grandson. You know who’d be really neat to see you play live with is this young kid Julian Lange (the 11-year-old guitarist on ‘Dawg Duos’ who is the subject of the Academy Award-nominated documentary ‘Jules at Eight’).

Yeah, he may be opening a show for us in a few weeks.

Does he scare you or what?

I’m not a guitar player so he doesn’t scare me. But I won’t let him touch a mandolin (laughs).

I’m surprised ‘Dawg Duos’ doesn’t have Sam Bush (the influential founding mandolinist of Newgrass Revival). But how’s the Sam & Dave project coming?

Well, we keep talking about making a record. We’ve got the name for it, ‘Hold on We’re Strummin’.’ I just saw Sam at the Grammys. We keep talking about that. I don’t know when or if it will happen. We did ‘Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza.’

Yeah, that was great. That and ‘Tone Poems’ are two of my favorite records.

I’ve got ‘Tone Poems III’ coming later this year. Vol. III will have Bob Brozman and Mike Auldridge. It’ll be National guitars and dobros. Brozman is Mr. National guitar and Mike is the great modern dobro player from Seldom Scene. Vol. II with Martin Taylor was the Arch Top jazz guitars and mandolins. The concept was better refined than Vol. 1 (which featured Tony Rice). Vol. III will be out late summer, early fall.

The next one is ‘The Pizza Tapes.’ Jerry Garcia, myself and Tony Rice. That’ll be out April 25. Tony and Jerry had never played together. When we were making the original ‘Tone Poems,’ I invited Jerry over to meet Tony. We did a bunch of jamming in the studio. A tape was bootlegged from that. The only tape that ever got out of my studio. The story that we got was that a pizza delivery guy swiped the cassette off Jerry’s kitchen counter. That’s called ‘The Pizza Tapes.’ I finally decided to release the official version. That was from February of ’93. It’s really good. Jerry was really having a good time. We all were, but he was really getting off on Tony. I left a lot of the laughing in there. You’ll have to check it out.

I can’t wait. Is that the best part of having your own label, putting out special projects that otherwise would never get released, at least not with the love you bring to them?

Yeah, if they go well.

‘Tone Poems’ and ‘Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza’ are just chockfull of stuff. Is that the best part of the label but also the most difficult?

It’s a lot of hard work. I try to do things that nobody else is doing. And I try to do things that have some sort of historical or educational component. I’ve also released Jacob do Bandolim (Brazilian mandolin master of the 1930s-50s), (mandolin innovator) Dave Apollon and (swing guitarist) Oscar Alemán. They’re all dead. They’re all great string musicians. Jacob do Bandolim was the master of a style of music called choro music from Brazil. There’s two volumes of recordings from the 1950s. Dave Apollon was a great mandolinist who didn’t record very much, but he was an amazing virtuoso. There’s a double CD of all his great stuff. Oscar Alemán was a lesser-known but amazing swing guitarist who was a contemporary of Django Reinhardt. He was from Argentina.

There’s music that I’ve discovered that’s gotten lost. If there’s a way that I can expose it, at least get it in print, then that’s part of my mission. It’s not just to do my own stuff, but at least make the other stuff available.

Do you think A Bluegrass Reunion, the new version of Old and In the Way without Garcia, will work together again?

We haven’t done that in a while. I love playing with those guys, but my main agenda is my band and my music. That’s my contribution. I can’t create this other stuff. If somebody else creates it and pays for it, I’m into it. Like say a festival if I’m playing there and Pete Rowan is playing there, they’ll want that to play there. I’m making five to six albums a year that are involved and touring and writing material for my band. That does not give me much time to create other things. If somebody says, ‘We want you to do this,’ then I’ll consider it.

Was ‘The Thrill Is Gone’ directed by Justin Kreutzmann, the son of Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann?

Yeah, and my daughter, Gillian. Both plan to do a Garcia/Grisman video.

Long form?

Yeah.

What was the last thing you did with Jerry?

Well, it was his last recording session. We recorded a Jimmie Rodgers song called ‘Blue Yodel No. 9’ for a project of Jimmie Rodgers songs that was put together by Bob Dylan. We also released that track on one of our samplers. We put out samplers every eight records called ’100% Handmade Music.’ We just put out ‘Vol. V.’ We have two tracks from the previous seven CDs and then something that’s not available anywhere else. ‘Vol. IV’ has that last recording with Jerry. ‘Vol. V’ has a track that we just recorded recently with Martin Taylor, Julian and myself. That’s just about to come out.

What do you miss most about Garcia?

Oh boy. Well, you know, the whole nine yards. I kind of keep him around. I feel like I keep him hanging around. That he’s still around. His influence is still there. I try not focus on missing stuff. We recorded an awful lot of music, and there’s still a lot more to delve into. I’ve just been putting together this ‘Pizza Tapes.’

You may keep his legacy alive even more than the Dead does.

The Dead was something Jerry was getting tired of. He had just done that too much. When we got together, we played what he wanted to play, music that interested him. All the traditional folk stuff, kind of revisiting our influences.

Given all that music that you’ve explored and you’ve created, what is it about acoustic music, string music that makes you seemingly tireless in playing and promoting it? What is it about it that makes you work so hard and at the same time have so much fun?

I love it. I have this opportunity now that I have this company. I can do all these things. I’m at the point in my life where I’m an old guy, but I’m not that old. I still have a lot of energy. So I’m making hay while the sun shines. I might have done this earlier, but I didn’t have the opportunity. Before Acoustic Disc, if I had an idea, I had to sell it to a record company. That was hard to do.

You’ve been recording since ’63. What is it about this kind of music? It’s very varied, very diverse, but you can still trace all of its roots to a similar place. What is it about it that you love so much?

I love music. Part of music is just the sound of it, making the sound. That’s the thing about acoustic instruments. The sound is the job of the musician to produce that sound; other than the instrument builder. It’s not like a synthesizer that comes off the assembly line. You push button No. 74, and it’s going to sound exactly the same as button No. 74. And no matter who pushes button No. 74, it’s going to sound like that. If you have a mandolin that was made in 1922 by craftsmen the likes of which don’t exist anymore because you couldn’t afford to pay them, they knew what they were doing. They hadn’t discovered a way to make everything real loud. I just think those are the real tones of music, acoustic instruments.

Electric instruments and synthesizers, I’m not saying there’s no artistry involved in that. But there’s much more artistry involved in acoustic music. Look at all the violin players there are in the world, and yet a guy like Stephane Grappelli could play one bar and you know it’s him. To me that’s artistry. Whereas a guy like Jean-Luc Ponty is a great player, but he’s devoted a lot of energy into making his violin sound like an electric guitar. You can still recognize who it is, but I think acoustic musicians have to make the sound too. If they want it loud, they have to play loud. They have to make the tone. To me, that’s a big part of musicianship that a lot of musicians just lose out on because they let technology do it for them. I don’t think they come up with a superior tone. I know I’m in the minority on that.

I mean, Carlos Santana just sold eight zillion records, and that’s fine. I like what he does. But I’m in this other field. It’s a smaller field. Basically, they developed the electric guitar so it could be louder. They never really got a prettier sound out of it to my ears.

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